Take a look at this:
my comments: 1. The roads all had fairly well marked lane dividers, not a fail test. 2. The cameras do not seem to see very well up the side roads at a stop sign. No protection from someone speeding down that road.
edit: above should be “full test”
I will return to that site in order to watch the video, but for the time being, I have to wonder if the author of that piece even attended high school. If one of my ninth grade students produced the following sentence, he/she would have received a failing grade:
However, the video in real time truly show’s the automaker is making true progress.
Real journalism is dead and the dead are writing the handbooks.
Tesla would be the first car to have autopilot that relies only on sensors. All other manudmfacturers also use GPS.
What happens when it snows?
@wentwest asks about snow. Ford says no problem at all, though I am a skeptic of autonomous driving in all conditions.
I too am skeptical. But this technology is still evolving. Give it 5-10 years.
This is a car driving on a well-maintained road, in good weather, with all road markings present. As mentioned, what happens in snow? What happens on a dirt road? What happens in a work zone, or when a policeman directs traffic to drive contrary to posted traffic signals?
In my hometown, we have local roads with no markings (either shoulder or double yellow), and parking on both sides. When both sides of the roads have cars, these “two-way” roads are roughly 1.5 cars wide. How will a computerized car manage the “give and take” necessary to drive these roads?
And what about judgment? There’s a “T” intersection at the bottom of a 12% grade. If a truck appears to have lost its brakes, will the car have sense enough to realize that “illegally making a right on red” beats the hell out of “being smushed by a Mack truck?” AFAIK, computerized cars treat traffic like a giant game of Frogger…judgment and situational awareness “don’t compute.”
IRL, human drivers with “good judgment and passable reflexes” tend to be safer than the other way around. Why would computers be any different?
Hey, that looks okay to me! I guess I should have studied more in English after all. Never did like it, though. 
Seriously, these systems have progressed at a much faster rate than I ever expected. I’m actually amazed at how well they perform, while still recognizing that there’s a ways to go before true “Johnny Cabs” become ubiquitous. Driving in real traffic on real roads in all seasons in all areas (urban, rural, northeast, southwest, etc. etc.), constantly interacting with tractor-trailers, '80s Oldsmobiles, 21st century Luxuses (Lexi?), and the countless other variations on transportation is a highly complex problem to solve. But IMHO the start the technology is off to is truly amazing. Their becoming better than human drivers in all situations may become reality in my lifetime.
IMHO it will, however, be a very, very, very long time before these vehicles become ubiquitous and can all interact with one another, which would be the ultimate setup. The roads will be mostly populated with the current population of vehicles of all ages and types the overwhelming majority of which will not have the technology to participate well into the future.
Really?
I hope that you are kidding.
The author of that little article used the possessive form of the word “show”, rather than the correct plural form of the word. Yes, I realize that many people do not seem to understand the difference between plurals and possessives, but…shouldn’t somebody who is being paid for his writing be knowledgeable in that area?
Additionally, using “truly” and “true” in that same sentence–separated by only 5 other words–suggests poor writing ability and/or a lack of proofreading of his own work.
Not sure I’d agree on the pace of development. This has been in development for over 20 years. Check out this write-up and links of the 1995 “hands off” journey of a Carnegie-Mellon project car.
https://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/news/then-and-now-2850-mile-no-hands-road-trip
This was part of a project to automate portions of the highway so that cars could “platoon” in close formation to increase traffic density. Here is a video from 1997 about the PATH project.
I was kidding, but just barely. I can’t get excited about the technical English details if the point being made is clear. To me, many of the rules are just made up anyway, and they change over time. Read the original Constitution of the United States, written in the language of the time, and you may even have difficulty interpreting some of it. As a matter of fact I’ll bet few people even take the name as a description of what the document actually is, a description of how our government is constituted, rather than thinking it’s just a document title.
I’m in the habit of starting sentences with conjunctions, and while my H.S. English teacher would have had a fit, I generally make my point clearly. And I’m still wondering what a “dangling participle” is. That’s why I prefer physics, the rules ain’t made up! They are what they are, regardless of what they’re called. Our understanding of them might evolve, but the rules never do.
I have to admit, however, that when writing for official purposes I’m far more aware of the rules of the written word.
One of my favorite little books on the importance of correct grammar is titled, “Eats, shoots, and leaves”, and the cover has a sketch of a Giant Panda shooting somebody before he heads for the exit.
For those who may be puzzled by this reference, the author of that book found a reference to the diet of Giant Pandas that stated, “Eats, shoots, and leaves”, instead of, “Eats shoots and leaves”.
So–yes–proper punctuation, as well as correct grammar, can drastically affect the meaning of a sentence.
I’m still wondering about that one, myself. I was absent for a couple of days during 6th grade when the teacher covered gerunds and participles, and I have never quite figured out those elements of language, even though–I think–I can write in a credible manner.
In other automotive-grammar news:
A guy in a BMW pulls into a gas station and the guy on the other side of the pump asks, “Where’d ya get that fancy car at?” Reply: “Well, I went to Harvard, and at Harvard we learned to never end a sentence with a preposition.”
Reply: “OK, Where’s ya get that fancy car at, a**hole.”
;-]
LOL, I love it!
Thanks for the laugh, insightful!